Front desk and reservations
Practice routine account and document decisions without imitating a distressed guest or active booking problem.
For Hospitality
Phishing Simulation Planning for Hotels and Hospitality Teams
Hospitality teams coordinate reservations, guests, events, payments, loyalty programs, suppliers, facilities, and around-the-clock property operations.
A responsible simulation should practice verification without using guest records or interfering with reservations, payment, safety, access-control, and property-management systems.
Industry-specific scenarios • Safe campaign boundaries • Reporting practice • Contextual measurement
01Understand the work
Design around how hotels and hospitality organizations actually operate
Start with the people, systems, authority, and verification routes involved in one real workflow. The exercise should practice an action employees can take without disrupting customers, operations, safety, or real incident response.
Events and sales
Use invented groups, contracts, files, and payment requests for event and corporate-account workflows.
Finance and suppliers
Reinforce callback and approval steps for invoices, bank changes, refunds, and vendor portals.
Facilities and properties
Avoid safety, access, fire, maintenance, and outage themes that could trigger an operational response.
02Choose the scenario
Use a recognizable request with a safe response
Give the scenario one learning objective and one explainable next step. Use fictional people, organizations, records, transactions, and incidents, and avoid exploiting a live problem or sensitive relationship.
Group-booking document
Practice validating an invented organizer, event, file owner, permissions, and destination.
Supplier invoice
Ask employees to confirm a fictional vendor and transaction through the normal process.
Reservation platform alert
Reinforce reaching the authentic service independently rather than following an unexpected sign-in link.
Payroll or benefits notice
Practice opening the known workforce service from an approved route.
03Plan responsibly
Resolve operational questions before launch
| Consideration | Question to answer | Required preparation |
|---|---|---|
| Guest boundary | Could the message expose or distress a real guest or resemble an active reservation or payment issue? | Use fictional neutral details and keep guest records out of every campaign component. |
| Property operations | Could the scenario trigger safety, access, maintenance, or outage action? | Exclude operational emergency themes and define property-owned stop conditions. |
| Shift coverage | Who receives reports from overnight, weekend, and seasonal employees? | Choose supported windows or publish an asynchronous reporting and response route. |
| Shared devices | Can activity from front-desk or back-office shared systems be attributed reliably? | Treat uncertain events as device or workflow observations. |
04Run the exercise
Move from an approved brief to useful follow-up
- 1
Define one behavior
State the request being tested, expected verification or reporting action, authorized audience, permitted data, and intended use of the findings.
- 2
Confirm the real process
Make sure employees can reach the authentic service, contact, approver, reporting tool, or escalation route before testing the behavior.
- 3
Pilot end to end
Test representative accounts, locations, shifts, devices, email controls, landing pages, event records, reports, stop conditions, and follow-up.
- 4
Brief response teams
Prepare security, IT, operations, communications, managers, and relevant providers while preserving normal handling of unrelated real reports.
- 5
Debrief and improve
Explain the expected action, provide relevant private learning, and assign every process or control improvement to an accountable owner.
Source: NIST: Building a Cybersecurity and Privacy Learning Program
05Measure responsibly
Interpret campaign activity in business context
Record intended recipients, exclusions, successful deliveries, unique recipient events, verified reports, response handling, and completed follow-up. Reconcile automated inspection and repeated events before attributing activity to employees.
Review property, role, shift, shared-device use, occupancy, event load, delivery, and reporting access. Avoid property rankings when audience sizes and operating conditions differ.
Use findings to improve real reporting, verification, identity, access, email, vendor, and support processes. A single interaction does not explain why a decision occurred and should not become an employee risk score.
Common questions
Common questions about Phishmake's features, onboarding, and support, answered to help you get started with confidence.
Can a simulation imitate a guest complaint?
Avoid distressed guests, payment disputes, safety incidents, and active reservation problems. Use a neutral fictional administrative workflow.
Should overnight staff be included?
Only when reporting and support remain usable during their shift. Provide an asynchronous route if live coverage is unavailable and record that context.
How should shared front-desk events be measured?
Treat them as device or workflow events unless individual attribution is reliable. Do not infer which employee acted from a shared session alone.
Can multiple properties be ranked?
No. Occupancy, events, staffing, devices, delivery, scenario relevance, and support differ. Use contextual results to improve shared processes.
Sources & further reading
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